


Mid-Process

by TheDarknessFactor



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Cinematic Universe, Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: Angst, BvS spoilers, Coping Mechanisms, F/M, Grief, Mourning, Post-Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 10:04:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6513727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarknessFactor/pseuds/TheDarknessFactor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The apartment (not home; it probably won’t ever feel like home again) is dark and silent when she gets back.  She doesn’t bother turning on the lights in the living room, navigating her way around the couches and dumping her bag on the ground next to one of the standing lamps.  </p>
<p>Clark’s shoes are still in the foyer.  She hasn’t touched his stuff since…</p>
<p>Putting that thought out of her mind, Lois changes into her pajamas and goes to bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mid-Process

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second prompt I answered from [morriganwarrior](http://morriganwarrior.tumblr.com). It was a good one for venting my Clois feels. Hope you guys like it!

“I think we can help each other.”

Lois shoots Bruce a dubious look.  He doesn’t look at all fazed by it, and she sort of hates him for that.

“Help how?” she asks.

He shrugs.  “I’ve read some of your work, Ms. Lane.  I know you’ve got a keen eye for when something’s amiss, and I know that you’re willing to get your hands dirty to expose the truth.  You’ve got persistence and determination, and good judgment when it comes to telling stories.  We could use someone like you.”

By ‘we’, she suspects that he means himself and Diana, who is currently on a leisurely stroll around the Kent family property (probably waiting for Bruce so that they can do their whole… superhero hunting thing).  

“I don’t really see what I get out of it,” she states.

“My resources, at your disposal.  Any lead that you want to follow up on - for a story, anything - I can help you with that.  You might not have to charge headfirst into danger to get there.”

Lois angles her body away from him, staring over at the cemetery.  She thinks she can see Clark’s grave from here.

“I’ll think about it,” she answers at last.  

Bruce nods.  “That’s all I can ask.”

* * *

She’s given a week of paid leave before Perry asks her to come back to the Planet, and when she does, she’s in a better situation work-wise than she’s ever been before.

Stories that really matter - about the awareness surrounding a small town in Michigan and how they don’t have clean water, or about the situation surrounding the Panama Papers - all but fall into her lap.  It’s in no small thanks to Bruce and Diana that she manages to get so much detailed information on these incidents, and Perry is stunned by the articles she puts forth.  She spends the first couple of weeks exposing more and more of LexCorp’s dirty work, immensely satisfied when readership of those articles is through the roof.

It’s easier when she’s able to work until she feels numb, and then collapse into bed at the end of the day and just sleep.  Ordinarily her workday would end at the normal five o’ clock time, but these days she tends to stop by Wayne Manor.

On this particular day, she greets Alfred and follows him down to the Batcave (it’s such a juvenile name, but there’s really nothing else it could be called).  

“Master Wayne and Miss Prince are away,” Alfred tells her, “But he’s sent a few things for you to look at.”

It’s a record from Central City - about a string of thwarted robberies.  Lois pages through the list, already knowing that Bruce and Diana are investigating one Barry Allen, and marks off which ones she thinks are the work of the Flash and which ones are just the robbers getting cold feet.  She then spends her time using the Wayne computers to do more research on the outsourcing of labor by American clothing companies.  She works until she realizes that it’s one in the morning, and she should really be getting some sleep.

The apartment (not home; it probably won’t ever feel like home again) is dark and silent when she gets back.  She doesn’t bother turning on the lights in the living room, navigating her way around the couches and dumping her bag on the ground next to one of the standing lamps.  

Clark’s shoes are still in the foyer.  She hasn’t touched his stuff since…

Putting that thought out of her mind, Lois changes into her pajamas and goes to bed.

* * *

Weekends are the worst.

Well, maybe not the _worst_ \- every other weekend Lois has a standing invitation to the Kent family farm, and it helps lighten the weight in her chest whenever she gets to spend time with Martha.  But the weekends when she’s at home…

She tried to convince Bruce to let her help him at the manor on weekends, but he’d put his foot down.

“You need to get some rest,” he told her, tone brooking no argument.  “Alfred tells me how long you stay every night.”

It makes Lois want to scream, because the last thing she wants to do is be alone with her thoughts, but she forces herself to move.  Once something of a slob, she now cleans the apartment thoroughly on Saturdays.  She throws all of the whites in the washer and scrubs at the stove, even though it’s barely used.  

She’s been reduced to cleaning out the inside of the microwave before she finally gives up on finding new things that need to be washed.  She takes the clothes out of the drier and folds them, again hating the silence that pervades the apartment.  

It figures that the thing that has turned her into a complete workaholic - and a better journalist than she’s ever been before - is grief.

On impulse, she slips into one of Clark’s shirts.  It fits horribly, but the flannel is warm, at least.  It’s one of the shirts that she used to make fun of him for, to which he would reply, “Hey, do I make fun of you for your terrible hats?”

Lois’ mouth had worked silently in outrage before she finally said, “My hats are not terrible!”

“Don’t get me wrong, they fit great, but I don’t see the appeal of the neon colors.”

Lois chokes out a laugh, but it sounds hollow, and is almost worse than the silence of the apartment.  

She decides to get to work on the rough draft for her next article, fitting together facts and quotes on her laptop until she has something that’s half-cohesive in front of her eyes.  She’s pretty sure that everyone who knows her would frown on her for doing this when she’s supposed to be, in Bruce’s words, ‘resting’, but she finds it difficult to care.

Someone knocks at the door.  Visitors are about the last thing Lois needs right now, so she ignores it.

She agonizes over the decision to include the Oxford comma or not, since there’s a phrase which could easily be misinterpreted without it, when the knock comes again.

There’s no reason for whoever it is to believe that she’s home.  Lois rolls her eyes, but still doesn’t move.  Next time she might be bothered to open the door and tell the person to fuck off.

The third knock is a lot more startling, for one reason: it doesn’t come from her door.

Lois sighs.  Diana has done this before (because Diana likes to show off), but she almost always calls first.  A tingle of worry curls in Lois’ stomach - if Diana didn’t call, then that must mean that there’s something seriously wrong.  Maybe Lex escaped from prison.  Or they’ve finally managed to convince one of the metahumans to join their cause.  

She’s about to pull back the curtain when a voice on the other side says, “Lois?”

Lois freezes.

This is the part she’d been dreading - the part when her lack of sleep caught up to her, and she started imagining things.  

The voice pipes up again.  “Is that my shirt?”

Lois draws back the curtain, fully expecting to see nothing apart from the cityscape.  And yet there he is - wearing a shirt that’s practically identical to the one she has on, albeit a different color.  The part of her brain that is still functioning says that his meager fashion sense survived his death; the rest of Lois’ brain tells that part to shut up.

She opens the door with mechanical movements.  

“Tell me I’m not going crazy,” she says flatly.

“Um…”  He surveys their surroundings, both eyebrows going up.  “Well, the apartment is clean, so I’m not sure I can say that.”

Her jaw drops.  Clark is standing in front of her (still probably hallucinating), apparently very much alive unless he’s a zombie or something, and he’s _making a goddamn joke_.

“You might want to stand back,” she finally says.

“…why?”

“Because I’m going to punch you.”

Clark doesn’t move.  Lois punches him - in the chest, because punching him in the face would probably break her hand - and is surprised when she sees that his wince is genuine.

He’s also solid.  Well.  So much for hallucinating.

“You’re still hurt, aren’t you?” she asks.  It’s less of a question than it is a statement.

“Maybe?” he says.  “A little?”

For once, her stripping his shirt off has nothing to do with running her hands over his pecs.  There’s a massive, horrific scar there, but at least it’s not a hole.  She buttons his shirt up again for him, aware that there’s probably a matching one on his back.  

“I’m - “  It’s like she’s struggling to breathe, all of a sudden.  “I think… I need to use the bathroom.”

He doesn’t say anything while she stumbles around him.  She doesn’t lock the door behind her, and she doesn’t really need to use the toilet, but she suddenly finds herself curled up on the floor, gasping out sobs.  She doesn’t really know if they’re sobs of relief or if all of the grief she should’ve been doing over the past month is catching up with her.

It’s probably both.

Clark eventually opens the bathroom door, right around the time when she’s feeling her eyes finally start to dry out.  He rests a tentative hand on her shoulder and, when she doesn’t push him away, scoops her up and carries her into the bedroom.  It’s when he gently sets her down and then proceeds to curl around her, his frame solid and familiar, that the realization finally hits her and she’s crying all over again.

He doesn’t say anything, but his grip tightens.  

Lois struggles to regain control of herself, and when she finally succeeds she says, “I hope you’ve spoken with your mother.”

“I did,” he answers.  “I didn’t really want her freaking out when she saw the hole where my grave used to be.”

There are so many legitimate reasons why anyone would be freaked out by that that Lois can’t bring herself to laugh.

“Good,” she says.  Martha, who has been nothing but kind to Lois, deserves that much.

“Heard you’ve been giving LexCorp hell,” he tells her.  “Stocks are plummeting.  I don’t see them coming back from this.”

“Well, short of bashing Lex Luthor’s head against the wall of his cell, there wasn’t much else I could do.”

That brutal truth leaves her mouth without her permission, and she tilts her head up to stare at Clark.  Lois knows that that kind of violence isn’t exactly something he approves of, but he’s just staring at her with a gentle look on his face.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” he says.

‘Okay’ isn’t really the word for it - Lois knows full well that she’s been coping terribly.  She wonders if she would have ever recovered and gone back to something resembling a more normal life, then firmly decides that it doesn’t matter.  Clark doesn’t need to know just how not okay she’s been.  He’s here _now_ , and that’s what matters.

“I’m glad you’re okay too,” she whispers.  

They’re both silent until they fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still accepting prompts for BvS - gen, Clois, Wonderlane. Feel free to send them to my [ask](http://darknessfactor.tumblr.com/ask) or message me on Tumblr!


End file.
